Opectator
JANUARY 5, 1833
A VERY singular controversy is going on in the newspapers. The parties are the mistress on the one hand and the servants on the other; the subject, a police report; the arena, the Times. It must be a joli menage, as the French call it, when the butler answers his lady through the medium of a para- graph in a Morning Paper. In the Times of yester- day, JAMES PUTNEY, from the pantry, gives Mrs. WELLESLEY, in the drawing-room, the lie direct. It might have been done with less trouble by mounting the stairs; but "we nose manners, takes in the Times, and tells mistress she is no better than she should be, through our paper." We wonder how JAMES looks, when, in the capacity of groom of the cham- bers, he lays the papers and his own correspondence before his worthy mistress. He probably takes the answer to his own letter to the twopenny post, and perhaps cannot sleep all night from impatience to learn what his mistress has said to him. There is something very dignified in scolding servants through a journal; and in the butler, instead of answering the bell, sitting down to answer the Times.... When the stamp is taken off, every thing will be done through the Morning Papers : the Editors will have to settle all disputed questions, and the Press will rule the world, both above and below stairs.
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